Comment 15 for bug 407491

The settings are off-by-one for me, and it looks like storing the settings work. And the settings take effect as soon as they are set. Your log showed:
TI:17:26:54 TH:0x207f070 FI:gpm-prefs-core.c FN:gpm_prefs_action_combo_changed_cb,267
 - Changing /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_battery to blank

Which means that you have set the lid closed when on battery to "blank". Start gnome-power-preferences with --verbose again and try every entry in the pull-down list. If your bug is the same as mine, the verbose output will show that the preferences manager will set the option just above the one you choose. Just to make this clear, my findings are:
1) What --verbose output is set, and stored/retained. If you then close the preferences manager it will work properly according to what the output told you (not what the GUI shows).
2) As soon as you open gnome-power-preferences, it resets the options (shown in verbose) to new values which are again wrongly shown in the GUI. Closing it after that will have changed your settings even if you didn't do anything.

I'm using 64bit with the latest updates (2.27.5-0ubuntu1). I tried installing 64bit karmic alpha 3 in KVM and this did not confirm the bug. However, KVM did not have suspend and hibernate options, so it may be a problem with the insertion of the extra options, or a wrong enumeration value??